A new fire house to replace the aging Ford Avenue station in Richmond Hill came a little closer to reality Jan. 15 when the Richmond Hill City Council voted to award the contract for design and engineering drawings for a new facility to the Savannah engineering firm of Kern-Coleman Co.

Richmond Hill Fire Chief Vernon Rushing, who has been pushing for a new station for some time, was pleased to see a step taken toward replacing the station that was originally built in 1960.

“As soon as the City Manager, Chris (Lovell) signs the contract they will get started,” Rushing said. “We will probably have something back by June or July. Then we will put the station out for bid and see what kind of money it is going to cost us. We are just waiting on that now, but at least it is a start.”

The contract with Kern-Coleman calls for the city to pay a little more than $82,000 for the plans.

In September, Rushing, in addressing a workshop regarding the station, said the existing building is dilapidated and falling down.

“The roof has a lot of rot in it. It would cost more to replace the roof than it would to tear it down and actually start something new. We started four or five years ago to fix it up for firemen to live in there. One of the engineers told us they didn’t think it was safe for people to live in there. So we just quit with all that stuff and left it sitting there and started planning the new fire station four or five years ago,” he said.

Currently no firefighters are stationed at the Ford Avenue fire house.

Rushing’s idea was to completely raze both the existing buildings that currently make up the station and replace them with a state-of-the-art facility that would include offices, sleeping facilities, a laundry, a training room, a day room, two bays for fire trucks, along with other features, in addition to the ability to withstand winds up to 125 mph.

However, city officials wanted to review other options as well before deciding. But after considering the alternatives, the decision was made to move forward with Rushing’s vision for the station.

“We had talked about building a complete new station and also to building just new bays for the fire trucks and attaching them to the old city hall building. I think the bottom line came down, replacing both buildings made more sense,” Mayor Harold Fowler said.

But before the station becomes a reality, the council will have to vote at least two more times; the first time to approve the plans from Kern-Coleman, and then again in order to award the contract to a builder.

“Maybe by May or June we’ll get the plans back and council can approve the design and then we can put it out for bid, so hopefully by the July-August time frame we will be ready to get started,” Fowler said.

A second reason for wanting a new station is that later this year the city will undergo an Insurance Services Office inspection, which will rate on the overall fire fighting ability of the city.

Currently the city has the best ISO rating possible, a 4. But based on the condition of the current Ford Avenue station, Rushing is concerned that it might go up. An increase in the city’s ISO rating would likely raise fire insurance premiums in the city.

Rushing is hopeful that evidence that the city is moving ahead with the station project will help keep the ISO rating favorable.

Once a contract for construction is awarded, completion of the new station should take about nine months, Rushing estimated.